


Needful Empires

by Interrobam



Category: Aladdin (1992), Mulan (1998)
Genre: Community: disney_kink, F/F, F/M, Fight Sex, Hate Sex, Violence, War, culture clash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 05:16:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Khan Mulan, Empress Mulan, declared war on the southern kingdom all of China fell over itself to die for her cause. They wore her colors, they wove magnolias into their hair, they pledged everything to their leader. For it was under her, the Demon Mulan, that they had conquered the empires to their borders, the islands to their coasts. It was under her that they ate well, traded easily, took slaves. They would follow her into a fire, into a dying star, out of fear and love of her.</p>
<p>When Sultana Jasmine told her people to harden themselves for war, to put aside Az-Zeka and all of their water to bear arms against the demon woman from the west, they were filled with doubt. They knew the threat they faced: there were constellations named after the kick the Empress had delivered to Shan Yu's chest. The Sultana knew their fears, soothed their fears. So far from their lands, so far from easy water and lush grass: in face of the desert they called home, the mightiest army would wither like a husk.</p>
<p>The war, they both decided in their hearts, would be over quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needful Empires

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Love Me and Despair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/229002) by [Minutia_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R). 
  * Inspired by [Khan Mulan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/375744) by [imaginary_golux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux). 



> Written for the Disney Animated Kink Meme. Khan Mulan is imaginary_golux's and Sultana Jasmine is Minutia_R's. I'm just trying to do them justice. And get them into each other's pants

When Khan Mulan, Empress Mulan, declared war on the southern kingdom all of China fell over itself to die for her cause. They sent boys and girls alike, willing and unwilling, there was one soldier from every family. They wore her colors, they wove magnolias into their hair, they pledged everything to their leader. She wanted the Sultana delivered to her feet: alive, naked, wrapped in the horse-headed flag of her empire, and there was not one voice foolish enough to rise in question to this order. For it was under her, the Demon Mulan, that they had conquered the empires to their borders, the islands to their coasts. It was under her that they ate well, traded easily, took slaves. They would follow her into a fire, into a dying star, out of fear and love of her.

Only Li Shang dared voice a protest against the planned invasion. He did not do it in the street or in the court, he was not a fool. In their bed he came to her, he touched the hands that once bore arms for him, he gave wordless tribute to the boy buried in the snow. He searched for the fault in her shell.

“Are you certain it is wise?”

“I am certain.” Her voice was a blade: so sharp, so cold.

“Agrabah is a fierce kingdom. It does not yield easily. It is a far trek, we will lose soldiers to thirst before our first battle has begun.”

“I am certain.”

“It is a wreck of itself. It's resources went to waste under the Sultana's husband. It is not worth the effort” Mulan turned her face to him, her scars to him, the blade of her voice to his throat.

“I am certain.”

After that there was no protest for Li Shang to offer his Empress, no words to persuade her. Shan Yu had no plans to question his Khan, his thirst for blood ran deep and wide. He longed to taste what the desert had to offer. Her banner rested firm in his hands. Mulan watched them depart, her two truest men, and she could feel the sun on her face for the first time in months.

When Sultana Jasmine told her people to harden themselves for war, to put aside Az-Zeka and all of their water to bear arms against the demon woman from the west, they were filled with doubt. They were afraid, they were tired from battle, they knew the threat they faced: there were constellations named after the kick the Empress had delivered to Shan Yu's chest. The Sultana knew their fears, soothed their fears. So far from their lands, so far from easy water and lush grass: in face of the desert they called home, the mightiest army would wither like a husk. She had come so far, lost so much, there was not an empire in the world she would allow to take her hard won land from her. She took careful council from her advisers, meticulous notes on the rumors of merchants. She read of the history of Khan Mulan, the history of her empire. After a night of careful thought she disregarded some of her knowledge, tucked other pieces into her heart and mind, and steeled herself for what was soon to come. She took a bent lamp into her hand, touched her fingers to it like a lover. A man of blue smoke burst forth from it, his eyes curious and wary.

“Yes, O Master?”

“Genie. Troops from a foreign land come to mine, wishing to take it from me. Tell me their numbers, their leaders”

“Oh, is that all you want?” The genie put himself in glasses and greasy hair, tapping on a small machine with a feed of paper and speaking in a wining voice “Hm, let's see... carry the four, multiply by pi, divide by the square root of the prime meridian...”

“Every second you waste is a second they grow closer.” Her voice carried the press of a much ancienter need.

“Fine, fine.” The genie warped his face into a granite expression. “The troops that come number in the thousands. They are led by Li Shang and Shan Yu, trusted companions to the Khan Empress Mulan.” The Sultana considered this information: legends floated through her mind, spells both grand and subtle. A thrill crawled up her spine and laid its eggs there.

“How may I break them?”

When Shan Yu arrived at the gates of Agrabah Sultana Jasmine was prepared. She knew his kind: brave, strong, filled with superstition. She cast spells and mirages, set phenomena upon him, put the head of a demon on her men's necks. The Sultana had promised her people a loaf of bread for every left ear they could bring to her, an estate to any soldier who could come to her with a general's head, so that the street rats and noblemen fought with the same ferocity. She watched from her palace, sat among the birds in her garden as her subjects wallowed in foreign blood. The Sultana was pleased by the events that rose to her view. Li Shang came later, she suspected his factions were merely meant to clean the mess the Hun had left, to kill the stragglers and price the slaves. They were not prepared to come upon a battle in progress. Yet the Empress' consort fought fiercely, bravely, for his country and his leader. When Shan Yu retreated, when the remaining soldiers followed him, when her people were clamoring at her door with heads and ears of all shapes and sizes, he fought on. She told the Genie that she wanted him at her feet. She had favors to trade, he knew she was good for them, and soon the man was in chains in her throne room.

“You are the consort of Khan Mulan?” She waited patiently as her translator worked her question into Mandarin. 

“Empress Mulan.” He spat back, and she smiled slow and cold. She drew her blade, pointed it to the chest of the still struggling man, and traced the smallest line across his flesh. _I have touched what is yours._ She turned away, waving her hand dismissively.

“Let him go in peace.”

She knew Fa Mulan. Knew the woman who longed to rule this land, this continent, this whole world. She longed to rule time itself, turn it back and regain the honor, the father, the home she once had. She had her fist victory, her adolescent love, already. Jasmine remembered first loves, dreams, dead street rats. She knew the smell of them as they rotted away, and Empress Mulan's army stunk of it. Sultana Jasmine knew her enemy's depth: her lust for power, her need for revenge, her thirst for blood. It afflicted her in turn. _Let us sate each other._ She whispered from the scar she left on Li Shang's chest _Let us drink of each other's blood until we are as bloated as ticks. I promise not be gentle._

Mulan could read this message as if it were spelled out in characters twenty feet high, painted in blood on the side of her wall. She slammed her hand through a table, buried her sword in the column of her palace. Shang saw her rage, saw her agony and jealousy. He did not see the smile on her face as she tore into her scrolls of strategies, he did not hear the tint to her voice as she interrogated the scholars in her court. In bed he comforted her, in bed he held her calloused hands and hid his scar with a bandage.

“I warned you that Agrabah would not fall easily. I told you it was a waste of your time.”

“I tested your wisdom, you were right.” The blade that formed the Empress' voice was chipped that night, chipped but not dull by any stretch of the imagination. “I have the information I need, and now we can move on.” Shang felt a pull, a fearful voice telling him to retreat, one he had not known on any battlefield in his career.

“What do you plan to do?”

“We will send more troops.” He noticed it then: the lust he had not seen, the creeping eagerness at the edge of her eyes, the lilt of her voice. It made him so dearly afraid. “We will keep fighting until we win.” She pressed her hand affectionately to his bandaged chest “Sleep well tonight, we leave at dawn.”

At dawn her army left, this time with her at its head: resplendent in her armor, glorious on her demon horse. She would rise to the challenge she had been presented with. The journey was hard and long, dry and dull. She received news from troops she had sent behind Li Shang, the scouts she had dispatched ahead of her own party. Agrabah was still strong, but not as strong as it had been. With its people full of bread there was a gap in the viciousness of their fighting. Mulan planned to pry that gap open, cook and eat the empire that dared to defy her's as a turtle in its shell. She would kill the Sultana first, throw her head onto a high pike to crush the spirits of her people. The Empress had heard tales that the Sultana was beyond death. The Empress had heard the same tales of herself. She knew that her defeat of Shan Yu did not give birth to a star, did not make a sound that deafened all the animals and killed all the plants in the camp. She knew her horse was mere flesh and blood, her eyes incapable of murder unassisted by her sword. If her own legends were so thin to her, she imagined the Sultana's would be thinner still. Later, covered in the dirt of the Sultana's garden, blisters marking her skin, she would regret making this assumption. 

She had come in mighty, she had come in lonesome and proud. She had breached the border of Agrabah at a full gallop, heading to the high white towers of the palace, leaving her men and women behind her. This was a matter to be settled between the two of them: mask to mask, monster to monster, legend to legend, empire to empire. The walls were an easy climb, her hands detected ledges and cracks with practiced ease, and she found her enemy alone and unarmed by the fountain of her garden.

“Sultana Jasmine.” She did not know if the elder woman spoke Mandarin, but she was certain that the fire in her throat spoke the language of hatred and war, the language every child knew from birth. “I have come to take your land and slave your people.”

The Sultana rose from her perch at the fountain's edge, wizened with the magic of her dead husband, and was not phased. She summoned lightening to her hand, it crackled across her flesh, arcane and bright. She moved it through her body, through her blood, and thrust it at the pretender to her throne, a selfish brat bent on having three titles before her name. The Khan Empress took the blow to her sword: it followed the blade, burst her sleeve open with fire, tanned her skin. Her scream was angry, pained, _eager_. It hit Jasmine low and hot in her stomach. But half a moment later, the Empress' sword hit her in quite the same way. 

The Sultana remained unimpressed but by her boldness: immortality had rendered all combat but a small nuisance. She looked coldly at the hilt in her stomach, the red blood staining her robes, the wild white eyes of her enemy. She muttered an old language, brought her electricity back into her hands, and shot the Empress to the far side of the garden.

“Do not be a child.” She spat her words out with a spurt of blood, her stomach open and leaking, blood sticking her pants to her legs. “You pretend to kill me? Khan Mulan wishes to write me into her legend? I shall end it if your impertinence continues.” She knew the Empress could not understand her words, she did not care. The girl came up from the rubble fighting, broken sword in hand, sneer on face. She did not pause but for a second before charging.

“Well, Khan Mulan, terror to her own blood, will you strike a blow to me?” The Suntana's teeth were pink with blood, the lightening embraced her body in full as she hissed out her taunts. “Show me your legacy that I may _spit_ upon it.” The Empress gave out another scream: a warrior's scream, a demon's scream, and delivered a kick to the older woman's stomach. It thrust her back, onto the ground, so that her head cracked. _Delicious._ The younger woman straddled her, the Sultana could see her fist pull back the second before it connected to her face. She couldn't help it, she laughed. Mulan kept punching, kept screaming, kept fighting, until she too could not resist it. Until she too was overcomes with laughter. Then, defeated and victorious in the same breath, she kissed Jasmine so that her broken jaw ached.

They did not make love to one another. They fucked. They clashed against each other, as their armies had clashed for so many months, rough and unyielding. They made it painful for each other. They made it good for each other. They knew themselves, they know each other, they could never be satisfied by anything less than pain. The consorts who bent like bamboo in a storm, the eunuchs that knew better than to touch without permission, the girls brought up for total obedience, the street rats with familiar bruises, Li Shang, the Genie. The tapestry of their former lovers was threadbare, stitched with the thin cotton threads of love and loyalty, revenge and desire. It lay worthless at their feet. All angles, all bites and fingernails into flesh, all rubbing skin raw and bloody, they hated each other for hours. They hated each other until the sun rose.

In the morning the Sultana's wounds had healed. The Empress', in contrast, were just beginning to ache. Jasmine bathed herself in her fountain, and her nakedness looked so much starker to Mulan's eyes without adrenaline roaring in her ears. She could smell blood in the air, could hear screams beyond the garden walls. Jasmine turned back to the younger woman, unashamed of her skin, and spoke in a slow, broken form of Mandarin.

“Do not return.” Her lips lifted, just a bit, at the edges, and she pressed her hand to the thin scar between Mulan's breasts. “Without stronger army. Promise.” The Empress fit her own hand: calloused, scarred, deadly in its dexterity, over the Sultana's.

“Promise.”


End file.
